The “House Tax Hartal” of 1810–11

I haven’t been able to find much else about the “House Tax Hartal” of
1810–11.

One J.R. Erskine gives the following
description (I found the quote second-hand, but it was referenced to volume
two of Selections of Papers from the Records of the East
India House Relative to Revenue, Police and Civil and Criminal Justice,
page 88):

Between twenty and thirty thousand of the inhabitants of that city (Banaras)
consisting of all ranks and descriptions relinquished their occupations,
abandoned their dwellings, and assembled in the open fields. Instead of
appearing like a tumultuous and disorderly mob, the vast multitude came
forth in a state of perfect organization; each caste, trade and profession
occupied a distinct spot of ground, and was regulated in all its acts by
the orders of its own punchayet, who invariably punished all instances of
misconduct and disobedience on the part of any of its members. This state
of things continued for more than a month; and whilst the authority of the
British Government was, in a manner, suspended, the influence of the
punchayet was sufficient to maintain the greatest order and tranquility.

Eugene F. Irschick, in an overview of some of
the predecessors to Gandhi’s satyagraha movement that was published in the
Economic and Political Weekly in
1986, quotes some additional sources, including
the Acting Magistrate in Benares, who wrote to Calcutta, complaining that:

The people [here] are extremely clamorous; they had shut up their shops,
abandoned their usual occupations, and assemble in multitudes with a view
to extort from me an immediate compliance with their demands…

And the Collector of Benares wrote:

At present open violence does not seem their aim, they seem rather to vaunt
their security in being unarmed in that a military force would not use
deadly weapons against such inoffensive foes. And in this confidence they
collect and increase, knowing that the civil power cannot disperse them,
and thinking that the military will not.

He also quotes a British tax collector from an earlier tax strike near Madras
in 1796, in which the inhabitants deserted the
area, leaving the authorities to try to collect the tax by confiscating what
little property and livestock as were left behind:

The common practice with the Inhabitants on these occasions was to resist
both [the government and the collector] by collecting and using their
servants, traversing the country in large bodies, and putting an entire
stop to the cultivation and the harvest, until such control was withdrawn,
and their demands arising out of it, however unreasonable they might be,
are satisfied.

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